Chronic stress is one of the most common and least recognised causes of relationship difficulty, and one of the most treatable.
By Dr. Elena Touroni, Consultant Psychologist & Co-founder, The Chelsea Psychology Clinic
One of the things I hear most often from couples who come to see me is a version of the same sentence. “We didn’t used to be like this.” They describe a relationship that felt, until relatively recently, like a solid thing. However, now there are arguments that seem to come out of nowhere. A distance that neither person can quite explain. A sense of being in the same life but not quite in it together.
Sometimes what they are describing is a relationship problem. But often, when we sit down and look at the full picture, something else is going on. One or both of them is chronically stressed. And chronic stress, when it goes unnamed and unaddressed, has a very particular effect on the people we love most.
Why stress doesn't stay where it starts
We tend to think of stress as something that belongs to the place it came from e.g. Work stress belongs at work, financial worry belongs to the bank statement etc. But the nervous system doesn’t operate that way.
When we are chronically stressed, our nervous system is in a near-constant state of low-level threat. It is scanning for danger, bracing for impact and conserving our resources. That state doesn’t switch off when we walk through the front door. It comes with us.
And the people we feel safest with are often the ones who absorb the fallout. Not because our partners or families are doing anything wrong, and not because we love them less; but because the nervous system drops its guard around the people it trusts. The tension that has been held in check all day finds somewhere to release. And the place it finds is home.
What stress in a relationship actually looks like
Chronic stress in a relationship rarely looks dramatic. It tends to look like this:
Arguments that seem to have no clear trigger, or that escalate out of proportion to what started them. A shorter fuse and irritability, that the person experiencing it cannot always explain or contain.
A withdrawal from intimacy, both physical and emotional. Not a conscious decision to pull away, but a flatness and absence of the warmth that used to be there. There tends to be a sense, for both people, of being together but not really present.
There is a gradual erosion of the small things that matter, like the daily check-ins and moments of connection. Or the conversations that are not about logistics or to-do lists. These are usually the first things to go when we are stretched thin and their absence, over time, creates a distance.
Is it a stress problem or a relationship problem?
When couples come to me in this state, one of the most useful things I can offer them is a reframe. What you are experiencing may not be a sign that something is fundamentally broken between you, it may be a sign that one or both of you is carrying more than the relationship can easily absorb.
If there is a relational problem, we work on a relational shift. This involves the two people seeing and understanding each other differently, shifting patterns of communication, and rebuilding the trust and intimacy that has been damaged.
A stress problem needs something different first. It needs the individual who is chronically overwhelmed to understand what is happening in their own nervous system, to address the sources of that stress where possible, and to develop the capacity to regulate before the stress reaches the relationship. Sometimes this work happens in individual therapy, and sometimes alongside couples work. The important thing is that it is identified.
Treating a stress problem as a relationship problem is one of the most common and most costly misdiagnoses I encounter. Couples can spend months working on communication strategies when what is actually needed is for one person to get proper support for what they are carrying.
Why the stressed person is often the last to see it
In my experience, the person who is most stressed is often the last to recognise it in themselves. They have adapted to the load. They are functioning and showing up each day, but the stress has become their norm — which is precisely why it is so hard to see from the inside.
What they notice instead is that their relationship has become harder. They are snapping at their partner more, or they report feeling misunderstood, unappreciated, or alone. These feelings are often, pointing at something upstream.
The partner, meanwhile, is experiencing something that feels like rejection, criticism, or disconnection. So the stress is affecting both people, but neither person has named it as the source.
What actually helps
The first step, in my clinical experience, is naming it. Often the most relieving thing a couple can hear is that the tension between them is not evidence of incompatibility, but instead that something external is putting the relationship under a pressure it was never designed to absorb.
From there, the work takes different forms. Sometimes the priority is understanding the stress itself; its sources, its history, and why this particular person finds it so difficult to put down. Sometimes the priority is the relationship, helping two people who have grown distant find their way back to each other. Sometimes it is both, running in parallel.
What I have rarely found helpful is working on the relationship while ignoring what is driving the stress. The underlying pressure has to be addressed so that the couple can move forward.
What to do if this resonates
If you have read this and recognised something, the most useful thing you can do is not to immediately try to solve it. The temptation, particularly for people who are already stretched, is to add self-improvement to the list of things they are not doing well enough. That is not what I am suggesting.
What I am suggesting is that the difficulty you are experiencing in your relationship may have a source that is worth understanding properly. Not through a self-help framework, but through a clinical conversation with someone who can help you see the full picture.
That is the kind of conversation we have at The Chelsea Psychology Clinic every day with individuals not sure whether what they are experiencing is stress, depression, burnout, or something else entirely. With couples who are struggling and are not sure whether the problem is them, or between them, or coming from somewhere else. Or with people who are functioning perfectly well by most external measures, but are still not okay.
If you recognise yourself or your relationship in this article, our assessment process starts with a single conversation. You can book an initial consultation at thechelseapsychologyclinic.com, or call us on 020 3092 7353.
Dr Elena Touroni
8 April 2026
“Dr. Elena Touroni is a skilled and experienced Consultant Psychologist with a track record of delivering high-quality services for individuals with all common emotional difficulties and those with a diagnosis of personality disorder. She is experienced in service design and delivery, the management of multi-disciplinary teams, organisational consultancy, and development and delivery of both national and bespoke training to providers in the statutory and non-statutory sector.”
